Music can be considered an international tongue, often transcending language and cultural barriers. However, to ask an Alberta musician if there are any differences between European audiences and those closer to home, a few things might get lost in translation.
“I would say something that I know would get a laugh here in Alberta or in Ontario or somewhere else in Canada and (get) just kind of a polite silence,” Edmonton-based artist Maria Dunn remarked about her recent Netherlands tour. “So you’re not sure if it’s a language barrier or they just don’t think it’s funny.”
Dunn recently returned home after performing in the Netherlands for six weeks with the McDades, where she said audiences were appreciative, enthusiastic and often gave them a standing ovation.
The self-proclaimed storyteller through song will share her Celtic folk numbers closer to home next week when she performs in Okotoks for the first time on Dec. 3.
Dunn will be accompanied by Shannon Johnson, a member of the McDades, who produced all of her albums. She knows her music well, Dunn explained, and having only two performers on stage allows the audience to notice subtleties in the music.
“There’s actually a really lovely intimacy when there’s just two performers,” she said. “You make the connection a little more between you and the audience because there’s fewer people on stage.”
Dunn will perform a variety of songs, some influenced by her Celtic roots and others by North American folk music, with blue grass and country flavours as well. She said she still performs songs written 10 years ago because audiences still connect with them.
Storytelling is essential to her music so Dunn said audience members will hear some interesting background stories during the show.
“When I write a song … it’s because I’m really drawn into a story that I have heard and I want to share it with other people,” she explained. “The stories are everything from a story about my own family history and my grandfather’s life, to some stories about the Depression years here in Alberta, what life was like for people in the 1930s.”
Dunn gave the example of one of her songs, which describes a woman from a Jewish ghetto in Poland who immigrated to Canada. Her life was full of hard work, but Dunn tries to capture her resiliency.
She said she strives to pace songs that explore heavy topics with ones more light-hearted and at times encourages the audience to sing along. The stories are about real people and real life, which can be difficult at times, she noted.
“Folk music has always addressed the stories of real people. And so when you start telling stories about real people you do get into heavy issues because … we all experience things in our lives. We go through hard times and how do we deal with it? Although in some of my songs I might be singing about hard times, what I am trying to get across to people is the resilience and the grace of the person in that song.”
The storytelling aspect remains consistent in Dunn’s work as she embarks on different projects. It is the story that often dictates the style, she explained.
Dunn’s most recent album “The Peddler” was influenced by her Celtic heritage and she focused on accordion work and rhythm guitar accompaniment. She said she knew the songs would work well with a Celtic-style arrangement and approach and she wrote some with forms from traditional Scottish and Irish music.
An example of this was her version of a traditional ballad that takes many forms in different cultures. While it has varying versions, “The Elder Sister” tells the tale of two jealous sisters and the older one ends up pushing the younger one in the river. Dunn said she wanted to write the ballad from the elder sister, the villain’s, point of view and incorporated a traditional Irish and Scottish reel.
Dunn moves into a more folk style with her new project about women who worked at a clothing factory in Edmonton over the decades. Many of them were recent immigrants and their stories reflect the history of immigration to the area. She will share the stories of women who immigrated and worked there from different time periods, such as Ukrainians, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans fleeing communism and later Vietnamese.
“It’s really quite fascinating to look at all of those experiences, but also to look at the commonality of these women,” she said. “They shared so much in arriving in a place, starting to work somewhere to earn money for their family, not speaking English yet, the ways they helped each other.”
Dunn researched and interviewed women who worked at the factory. A Vietnamese woman sang her a traditional lullaby, which inspired Dunn to write one as well.
Dunn heads to the studio to record songs from the project in January and is working on a multimedia show to feature the women telling their stories.
As for her Okotoks show, Dunn said she was looking forward to performing.
Hopefully her jokes will amuse a more familiar audience.
To purchase tickets for the show, call the Okotoks Art Gallery at 403-938-3204. Tickets cost $25 in advance and $30 at the door. The show runs Saturday, Dec. 3 at the Rotary Performing Arts Centre and begins at 7 p.m.
